


A Helping Hand

by Perosha



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Friendship, Gen, former bromance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8246903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perosha/pseuds/Perosha
Summary: [Dream Drop Distance] Aeleus finds Dilan after he returns injured to the castle.





	

The trail of blood guided Aeleus out of the foyer and down the corridor that led to the eastern hall. In two places the dark droplets on the floor became a fresh puddle, soaked in the dusty rug with a red handprint smeared onto the wall beside, and the sight of each made Aeleus quicken his stride.

Halfway up the corridor, the trail stopped at a bench set against the wall. Aeleus slowed, now seeing the culprit, and the sound of his approach made Dilan wipe away a bead of blood about to drip from his chin, though he did not look up. Instead he sat bent double with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, as though trying not to pass out. Blood matted his long dreadlocks, smearing his face like war paint, and his torn uniform had dampened in places with the stain of it.

As Aeleus approached, Dilan forced himself to sit up straighter with a groan, leaning his back against the wall. The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the high windows bookended the bench on which he sat, leaving him in shadow, but it was still enough light to show that his skin was paler than usual, that his chest rose and fell unevenly.

“What happened?” Aeleus asked.

Dilan’s answer was another groan, pained but mostly frustrated.

“A Heartless. What else?” He wiped his forehead with the side of a fist, though as there was blood on his glove, this did nothing but smear a reddish streak across his temple. “The damned thing was stronger than I expected. But I felled it.”

His battered appearance belied his satisfaction, though he didn’t seem to be bleeding heavily any longer, doubtless having healed himself once he’d dragged himself here to safety. Still, the sight of him was disconcerting.

“You shouldn’t have challenged it alone,” said Aeleus, eyeing him warily, knowing he had to have fought something many times his size to have sustained such injuries.

“Feh.” Dilan wiped blood out of his eyes with a shaking hand. “You would lecture me, Aeleus?”

Aeleus folded his arms, and Dilan glanced to him sharply as if he’d spoken, his thick eyebrows raising. But in a moment, the look was gone. He harrumphed and averted his gaze, keeping his attention on the scuffed floor.

“I was careless,” he said sourly. “The creature shouldn’t have given me the trouble it did. Before, I could have easily...”

He trailed off, unwilling to give an explanation that was in any case unnecessary. _Before_ meant as a Nobody, a state of being that had been physically powerful for all its metaphysical hollowness. Recompleting meant not only being whole, but being fragile in a way they’d all but forgotten about. In the Organization there had been food and sleep, cycles of activity and rest, but in comparison with the limits of true humanity, it seemed in retrospect that their emptier selves had done much out of habit rather than necessity. Now they were whole again, but in some ways had less to show for it. That weakness made the Heartless that prowled the remnants of Radiant Garden more of a threat than they’d been in years.

Aeleus sat down next to Dilan on the end of the bench, leaving room between them. Dilan snorted, and Aeleus did not press him, simply making sure with sidelong looks that he was indeed not as badly injured as he seemed. There were a few wounds left, yes, but nothing life-threatening. They had the look of much worse injuries that magic had brought down to a manageable level.

Dilan, noticing his attention, made an irritated noise and applied pressure to a gash atop his right thigh, the torn flesh oozing a little beneath the seam of the hasty healing.

“We aren’t what we were,” said Aeleus. He stated it as a fact, with no admonishment. “We have to be cautious now.”

Dilan tried to put a hand through his dreadlocks, but their matted stickiness stopped him.

“A fine irony, isn’t it?” Grimacing, he instead mopped dried blood off of his neck with a clean section of his sleeve. “Years of work. To become _this.”_

He sounded as if he wanted to spit on the floor between his boots.

Patches of orange sunlight quivered against the wall behind them, perhaps briefly obscured by unseen clouds outside. Aeleus shifted, still appraising Dilan, who continued to grumble and gently prod at his various injuries, including one on his left upper arm that seemed to hurt most stubbornly.

“You should bandage up properly,” Aeleus ventured. “We have the supplies.”

“I’ve fared worse, Aeleus. I’ll live.” He did not sound much pleased by this fact.

Dilan made as if to get up, but the motion seemed to pain him, for he sat down suddenly and pressed his back to the wall, grinding his teeth, one gloved hand clenched into a fist so as not to reflexively clutch at the gash on his thigh. Aeleus stood, and though he wordlessly offered assistance, Dilan ignored it, instead holding onto the wall for support as he dragged himself to his feet, folding his elbow and leaning most of his weight on the forearm pressed to the wall. He looked in worse shape now that he was back on his feet; whatever the state of his wounds at the moment, he’d obviously already lost more blood than was healthy. To his credit, he swayed only once, cursing under his breath as he steadied himself.

“Stay here,” Aeleus told him. “I’ll bring you what you need.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Dilan let go of the wall, forcing himself to straighten and locking his knees. But he did not set off at once, and could not hide how labored his breathing was from the effort of standing. He did not look at Aeleus, either, choosing instead to keep his attention on the end of the corridor, obviously calculating how long it would take him to limp down it with what energy he had left. Aeleus watched without comment.

He and Dilan had not talked yet—not alone, not about anything that mattered. There had been too much else to deal with so far, the initial shock of recompleting quickly replaced by the practical concerns of being alive and home, meeting the Restoration Committee who knew so little of the truth, beginning to cautiously scrape together some semblance of routine in the rubble of their own sins. What was there to say in any case? That they’d been younger men once, strong and competitive, friends since youth? That if they’d had scars then, they were laughably shallow compared to the ones they carried now? It was all so long ago, an artifact of a time and place that would never come again, and the many years since were a vast gulf of silence that had been each of their fault in equal measure.

Dilan almost fell. Leaning against the wall spared him the indignity, but only just, and his snarl of frustration and pain was enough to make Aeleus speak.

“You shouldn’t be walking.” It was an order, if delivered with sympathy. “Stay here and rest. I’ll bring supplies.”

“I don’t need coddling, Aeleus.”

To prove it he started away, his injured leg giving him a heavy limp that he could do nothing to disguise. A dozen paces out he had to stop and hold the wall again, fighting not to crumple to his knees, and Aeleus did not ask permission before ducking and putting Dilan’s good arm around his own shoulders, holding him up firmly, offering no explanation.

Dilan resisted as long as he could, but could not stop himself from leaning some of his weight against Aeleus so as not to collapse. He’d gone yet paler with the effort of moving, and the gash on his leg had begun to bleed more insistently, the raw wound ugly through the rend in his tunic.

“I’m going upstairs,” Dilan said harshly, his tone daring Aeleus to argue.

Aeleus did not take the bait. Instead he adjusted his grip and stepped forward, but Dilan resisted, unmoving. Aeleus waited.

“Let go of me, Aeleus.”

“You can’t make it the whole way. You’ve lost too much blood.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Not alone.”

“Hmph. Odd to hear you argue it, of all people. You’ve always seen the sense in self-reliance.”

There was no point disagreeing. Dilan had always been more articulate than him by far, silver-tongued even, able with startlingly few words to convince others that what he had to say was true. Aeleus had never been loquacious, and in any case knew that pointing out the obvious practicality of not letting Dilan pass out in the hall from blood loss wouldn’t do anything to further the conversation. If Dilan had always been eloquent, he'd always been stubborn, too.

“This has been difficult for everyone,” was all Aeleus said. “None of us is happy.”

“I imagine. Though you and the boy are doing a fine job of feigning it.”

Through his surprise Aeleus could almost admire how few words Dilan needed to take hold of the conversation and transform it into one of his lances, striking a blow sudden and sharp enough to steer attention away from his own vulnerability. Under other circumstances, Aeleus might have even let himself go enough to react harshly, as Dilan desired, but Dilan’s battered and bloodied condition made it much easier to keep focus. The only way to win was to ignore the barb entirely.

“You can’t make it upstairs by yourself,” Aeleus repeated, not letting him change the subject. Dilan glared at him, but Aeleus did not relent, and finally Dilan looked away again, scowling.

“Leave me be, Aeleus.”

For an answer, Aeleus adjusted his weight against him, taking care not to brush against his injured leg.

“Let me go.” He tried to slide his arm out of Aeleus’s grip, and failed. Aeleus felt damp warmth against his own side where Dilan’s blood-soaked uniform touched his. “I don’t need your pity.”

“You don’t have it.”

Again they stared at each other, Dilan’s gaze skeptical and Aeleus’s expression as impassive and flinty as ever. Still, there was apparently enough in it that was readable from long acquaintance, because Dilan snorted and shook his head gently, his hair rattling.

“Fine, then,” he growled. “If you insist on being charitable. But no further than the stairs.”

This time when Aeleus started forward, Dilan did as well, though gingerly and with his teeth gritted. Without any conversation they made it all the way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor, and Dilan summoned the strength to extricate himself from Aeleus’s grasp, succeeding only because Aeleus allowed him to, not wanting to aggravate his injuries. Dilan sat one of the lower steps, bloodying their faded and dust-choked carpet, the rest of the ornate stairwell rising behind him into a gloom broken only intermittently by piercing shafts of sunlight from the high windows, many of them jaggedly shattered. Despite his stature, Dilan looked small against such a huge, empty backdrop. He touched his matted hair again, getting his breath back, trying to pick apart hair that blood had glued together.

“That's enough, Aeleus. I'll go on from here."

Did he even still know this man? Aeleus wondered as he watched Dilan put every effort into regaining his composure, still pale, still battered. He recognized him, certainly, and had many memories of a man who looked similar. But after so much time and such long absence, did it make any sense to say that he _knew_ him?

Then again, after all that had happened, could Aeleus even say that he still knew himself?

“Go on then, Aeleus.” Dilan wiped his forehead with the heel of his hand. The blood on his glove was now mostly dry. “I’ll be along eventually.”

He stifled a sigh and leaned his head back, closing his eyes, briefly letting himself be honest in his exhaustion. Aeleus knew it was also a request for him to leave, and that when he did, Dilan really would make it the rest of the way to his room on his own. He’d sit here as long as it took to regain enough strength to tackle as many stairs as he could, and then he’d rest and start again, and if it took him an hour to painfully reach his destination it would still be preferable, for him, to having his weakness acknowledged through assistance.

The simplest thing to do—the right thing, perhaps—was to obey the silent request. But Aeleus hesitated, and Dilan watched him with obvious and mounting annoyance, finally using the wooden banister to pull himself back to his feet, as if proving he was capable of it. His body was evidently not as determined as his spirit, however, for he first fell against the banister with a cry, and then would have tumbled down the handful of steps had Aeleus not caught him against his broad shoulder. More blood leaked from Dilan’s uniform onto his.

“You’re not in good shape,” Aeleus said. “You shouldn’t strain yourself.”

“What business it it of yours?” He could not yet let go of Aeleus’s shoulder, but squeezed it with a tightness that was more out of frustration than necessity. “Leave me be, Aeleus. I’ll recover soon enough.”

“You have to take care of yourself.”

“To what end, Aeleus? We’re men again, and pathetic for it. Should I pretend to be pleased?”

A flicker of disagreement passed over Aeleus’s face, unvoiced but enough for Dilan to notice. He laughed, bitterly, and the sound dissolved into a strange pained coughing when it upset some unseen wound on his torso. He fought to choke it down, bending forward slightly before righting himself, his breathing ragged.

“You don’t have to be pleased,” Aeleus said, “but there's no point in hating it. We're human again. We have hearts.”

“And I suppose you actually listen to yours?”

Dilan regarded him keenly in the gloom, and Aeleus could not provide any answer better than a shrug. He had to take care that the gesture didn’t loose Dilan from his position against his shoulder, and the frowning Dilan laughed at this answer, still bitterly, though this time without coughing. He jerked his head to indicate the corridor down which they’d come.

“Go ahead then, Aeleus. I’ll be all right. And if your heart’s truly goaded you back into caring...well. You ought to go keep your eye on those who matter to you.”

Aeleus did not follow his gaze. Instead he adjusted his loose grip on Dilan and looked up the dark stairs ahead, trying to remember how many there were, and whether there were enough landings on which they could stop and rest on the way.

“I’m trying,” he said, and pulled them both up the first step of the stairs.


End file.
